Projects – Ephemerality

May 29, 2026May 28, 2026

Estate Agile

Transferable skills are not always met with enthusiasm once employed outside their initially-intended realm. However, resistance does not negate their usefulness. In the context of a home, estates are, in fact, businesses that old money maintains. The revenue stream must continue, and so must the maintenance. And without careful management of assets, the estate will fall into disrepair.

I do not own a large estate, and neither am I from old money. My quaint half acre “estate” must rely upon family income, but even so, I too must take care to not exceed that which is available. I also am not in the possession of a butler’s services, nor his accompanying staff. Any work done here must be at the hands of those who reside therein. Neither of these resources are inexhaustible.

Therefore, I have applied my project management background, specifically Agile; or more specifically, Scrum Agile; into managing the eternal backlog of estate-oriented projects. It was not initially well-received by the family, but we need a system.

So I present to you: Estate Agile! Here’s the breakdown:

A time period is defined. I chose a month because that’s generally how financial plans align with recurring bills.
Each member of the family agrees to a personal time investment for the period, in hours, per week, because most projects are accomplished on weekends.
The investment is multiplied by the number of weekends in the time period. This becomes the individual’s total time pool.
A financial allocation is defined for the time period.
Projects are groomed for priority, personal time investment, and cost estimate.
Projects withdraw from each available time pool and the total financial resource pool.
Priority is defined as: High = health hazard, structural issue, or otherwise time sensitive, Medium = research required, potential long-term financial/structural/health issue, Low = cosmetic/home repair.
If the grooming cannot fully define all parameters, then it is not considered DOR (definition of ready). It is reduced in scope until it can be defined as DOR.
Projects are added to the commitment plan based on priority, followed by cost, then personal time commitment. The goal is to maximize the total number of projects for the time period without exceeding either the financial or time pools. If a project does exceed one of the allocations, then the next available project is selected until no more projects can be added to the time period. Unused time and finances do not carry over to the next time period.
Anyone can add a project to the backlog for future grooming.

We shall see how successful this is. So far it has, at the very least, curbed the insanity into manageable goals. Rather than forcing myself into project schedules, I can approach actionable items as defined by reasonable time and financial investments. If sanity is all I get out of this, then I’ll consider it a win.

–Simon

May 20, 2026May 20, 2026

Back Door Huh? Good Idea.

I can’t find a post about this, other than a brief mention elsewhere, but at one point I updated the back door with a modern lock and security film on its window. The frame, having degraded with time, was barely holding the door in place. I corrected the problem temporarily with hardware reinforcements. It worked for the foreseeable future.

Then I got COVID and Liz used my compromised mental state to convince me that the door itself needed replacing, after she tried and failed to strip it of paint for a fresh coat. An indifferent and barely conscious self agreed.

The back door, before I ripped out those ugly curtains.

To be fair, the steel cladding on the bottom of the door had recently warped and was catching. The seal around the frame itself had long since cracked and fallen out. There was definite water intrusion damage, but with so many priorities on a house’s upkeep, the door had remained as deferred maintenance.

So when my bout of COVID finally broke, we acquired a replacement door. It remained in the garage for a week on sawhorses while Liz applied goofy bee-themed designs. I will note at this point that we bought a pre-hung door, not because the included hardware is ever top-notch, but because I had learned the hard way that doors and frames shrink and warp at the same rate, and it’s almost impossible to match up a new door with an old frame. It can be done, but it’s definitely worth the cost/time offset. This lesson was learned with the inner garage door. Frustrating times, those.

Of course, installing a pre-hung door necessitates the removal of the old frame. And I’m glad I went through this trouble, because what lay beneath would not have been seen otherwise.

When the former homeowners installed the deck, as with all things they did to this place, they took the quickest and cheapest route to address any hangups. In this instance, in order to support the door base, they attached a piece of particle board vertically against the house frame. This wood was neither rated for moisture exposure nor sufficient to close the gap against nature’s intrusion. The particle board only succeeded in holding moisture against the house, resulting in rot and carpenter ant damage. And to further exacerbate the issue, it also formed a trench on top of the old concrete patio into which yard waste had accumulated.

Fortunately, the house joists were insanely solid, despite the ant damage. I suspect they were hardwood, not the usual pine, so I left them as-is, but not before we added a spray sealant for good measure. Then I layered planks of pressure-treated boards to replace the particle board and support the frame, stacked in a tile formation to prevent water ingress, complete with outdoor caulking on the joints.

The door itself, complete with frame, fitted as good as could be expected with only a few angry bouts of profanity. And as per my usual creed for upgrades applied to fixes, the strike plate was replaced with a security version, using 3.5″ screws through the frame and into the joists, in addition to the hinges. And the lock was given a proper upgrade as well.

I guess a beekeeper lives here, who’s also conscientious about weather-proofing and security.

Full sealant applied to the frame, the last external door has finally been addressed.

But not before a bronze bee knocker was added too.

–Simon

April 22, 2026April 16, 2026

Blue Oyster

My last mushroom farming attempt was successful, however the variety of mushroom I found to be unpalatable.

Wine Cap

So this year, I’m attempting Blue Oysters. I like oyster mushrooms. I hope this works out. This variety came as plugs, which I then embedded into chunks of a freshly-cut maple branch lost to high winds.

Here’s hoping! If they don’t take, I’m sure the wine caps will be back. The straw in the bucket is heavily packed with mycelium from last year.

–Simon

March 13, 2026March 9, 2026

Bow Down

A man should have weapons mounted on walls. This is a requirement of manhood. Failure to do so denies that which makes us men: the capacity for and proper use of selective violence.

However, the type of weapon and the method of display distinctly broadcasts the man’s association with violence. Sword = nerd and probably younger. Yes, I have a sword hanging up in the basement but I also have a history degree so I get a pass. Old family shotgun = appreciation for family history. Bolt-action rifle = appreciation for hunting or precision shooting. AR15 = douchebag.

But what about classic recurve/longbows? Well they’re awesome, of course. But as for storage, the bow is a unique customer. It can’t be stood up in a corner or shoved in the attic. Bad climate control can cause delamination, and improper support can cause warping. Unlike firearms, they’re very particular. Even when not intended to be displayed, they still need even, horizontal support in a low-humidity and low heat environment. And at 4-6′ long, they can take up an awkward amount of wall space. A solution was needed, but internet searches for bow holders tended to favor the compound variety, and anything else proved to be ridiculously overpriced. As usual, I would have to build my own.

…Which really didn’t require all that much imagination. A couple boards and hanging brackets would suffice, since they were going in the basement. Here’s what I came up with:

Basic and functional, and elegant in its simplicity. At last the bows are now not only properly stored, but also displayed. Manly!

–Simon

March 4, 2026February 26, 2026

Stumpery

Following the great firewood processing of 2025, I was left with some junk wood remnants: rotten chunks, un-splittable end pieces, wood that absorbed too much mud over the years, etc. So I carefully stacked them into a pile and ended up with a…

No, not a haphazard pile of junk wood. A stumpery!

No really, this is a thing. The great Monty Don – Britain’s most famous master gardener, told me so.

And no, I’m not making this guy up either. The Brits are weird. He’s on Amazon streaming. Look it up.

The premise being, a pile of large chunks of wood can add visual interest to an otherwise over-manicured garden. Maybe, or it might just end up looking like a pile of junk. Which is why I’m attempting to inoculate it with mushroom spores.